


Without

by humansandotherpeople



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anger, Angst, Concern, F/M, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Porn with Feelings, compassion - Freeform, fear for an absent loved one, grief for an absent loved one, sad polyamory, some hope?, the feelings being:, thirst for revenge for an absent loved one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-19
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-07-14 12:32:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16040558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humansandotherpeople/pseuds/humansandotherpeople
Summary: Miranda and Thomas without James.Miranda and James without Thomas.James and Thomas without Miranda.





	1. Married

Miranda strains her ears. Are those quiet, careful, bare-footed steps in the hallway, or is it merely wishful thinking, a figment of a sound conjured by her notoriously active night-time imagination?

The slow creak of her bedroom door confirms that her fancy did not merely take flight. The flickering light of a candle her guest carries illuminates his face. Her husband is gracing her chambers with a rare, but welcome visit. His reasons for coming here lining up with her nightly fantasies is even more rare, but just talking to him when he has, for once, as much trouble finding sleep as she usually does, is pleasurable also.

Miranda sits up, blanket wrapped around her shoulders, both to signal to Thomas that she is quite awake and there is no need to sneak around, and to make space for him to sit comfortably. Without such accommodation he is liable to draw up a chair rather than disturb her, which in her view is quite ridiculous, seeing as he already complains of backaches from sitting in chairs for work too long.

Thomas takes the invitation, carefully setting the candle down on her nightstand. He even tugs at a corner of the blanket and gets under it with her as he sits. His shoulder seems welcoming, so she leans against him. He leans back. They support each other's weight beautifully like this. His arm wraps around her back. His hand rests on her upper arm and begins to stroke it as if to comfort her. She recognises the gesture as a sign of his own emotional need, so she replicates it on him and whispers: "What is it, my love?"

"What if he doesn't return?" Thomas asks into the night.

"Oh Thomas," Miranda replies, "He isn't being stationed in Nassau. It's a return journey. What is he going to do? Desert because he met some exotic beauty? The navy is his life."

"That's what I worry about," Thomas says, "What if he lies down his life for our" He grimaces. "great and glorious navy? You've heard him say himself how dangerous the sea is. Storms. Ship life itself. Sea battles. Pirates."

Miranda's heart sinks. It, too, has on occasion been gripped by the same cold fear in whose claws Thomas is caught this night.

She rests her free hand on Thomas' chest, feels the steady beat of his life's blood being pumped through him. "Perhaps we should not have let a naval officer steal our hearts if we weren't prepared to trust him with keeping them safe at sea. He's a strong man and unbelievably clever. Not to mention determined. He will fight to the last to be able to return to us," To you, she thinks fleetingly, but the thought melts into compassion again in a second, like most of her jealous ones. "And he will be best placed to triumph in that struggle, don't you think?"

A smile ghosts, then lingers on her husband's face as he doubtlessly recalls either their mutual lover's strength or his cleverness or possibly both united. Then his eyebrows knit together.

"But he is also  _reckless_. I mean, circumspect with his affections," He sighs. "But much less so with remaining unhurt. Do you remember the evening he tried to to hide his cuts and bruises from a tavern brawl to defend your honour?"

Thomas lifts her hand and kisses the back of it gently the way he couldn't kiss James' bloodied knuckles that day.

Miranda smiles indulgently. "I think it was at least as much your honour as mine, even then. Do you believe he would pass up the opportunity to have you when you've been starved for him for months? His mind is not  _that_ addled by pride and audacity."

Thomas sighs again, then surprises her by turning his head and drawing hers close for a kiss. Not a quick familiar one, but one of those kisses that are hesitant at first, then grow more daring. She knows these from James. Even more often than between her and James they are shared between James and Thomas.

Miranda holds the back of Thomas' head firmly and pushes her tongue into his mouth the way James does once he's found his confidence. She draws back and strokes his hair while looking at him. His eyes are closed. He's licking his lips. She covers them with her own again, shows him all her collected longing. It's not quite been three months at sea for her, but she hasn't bothered with any new trysts in a while, and her husband and lover were quite wrapped up in each other even before one of them took off for the Americas.

"He'll be back," she tells Thomas, "and he'll want you  _so_ much." Her voice is low, not even intentionally so.

He kisses her neck. "Who's to say he won't want you first? Plenty of men on a ship."

She snorts. "Have you not been paying attention? He is devoted to you. He's not out there on the ocean longing for just anyone of any particular gender. He's longing for you." Thomas flinches as she touches a particularly sensitive spot between his shoulderblades. She finds it again and again he can't hide the same reaction. He grins at her.

"Do you think he's thinking of us, discussing him like this?" He's closed his eyes again, leaning in so his forehead touches hers.

"He'd be a fool not to know that it would happen at some point." She runs her hands over his shoulders, strokes into the collar of his nightshirt.

"He's not a fool." Thomas leans back against her high headboard. The blanket falls from his shoulders. His eyes are still closed.

"And he knows us." She encourages him to finally get his legs up onto the bed, tickles his toes just slightly, which makes him flinch and laugh again. Finally stretched out, his long body looks ripe for the taking. His nightshirt is even slightly tented.

"Knowing us, and wanting us, he's probably already pleasured himself to thoughts of this scene." Thomas cracks one eye open to look at said scene: His wife sitting on her haunches beside him, stroking his calves, hands wandering under the hem of his nightshirt. Miranda doesn't doubt that the worries about James' safety still weigh heavily on his heart, as they nag somewhere in the back of her mind, but they are both putting them aside for now to focus on the image of James' hands on himself as he pictures them like this, his lips forming their names soundlessly.

Warm shudders run through Miranda. "He might be doing that this very moment," she says, just to make sure she and her husband are on the same page, fantasy-wise. He closes his eye again and nods briefly.

Miranda's hands make their way up her husband's thighs, pushing up the nightshirt as she goes. They're not quite as shapely as James', but still have their own allure. Fine blond hairs stand on end under her palms. She sits on his shins, straddling his legs with her thighs. Her shift rides up. There can be no pretending that her genitals are James', but she does enjoy rubbing them on Thomas' skin so. She supports herself on his hipbones, her upper body hovering over him, a warm presence the shape of which need not be entirely obvious to him.

Then she shifts her hand. Her thumb grazes the base of his penis. He exhales shakily. His hand finds the back of her head, strokes it, tangles in her hair, draws her closer. Miranda falls to her elbows. Thomas smells of lavender soap and arousal. She licks along his member deftly, once, twice, again and again. It hardens. He's holding his breath now. He finally breathes out when she envelopes it with her lips.

"He  _better_ come back. He's never seen this..."

The thought of James watching her and Thomas together like this spurns Miranda on further. She licks and sucks her husband's cock enthusiastically and ruts on his leg, soon gliding back and forth on it effortlessly as she grows slicker and slicker. Thomas' touches on her head are feather-light as she bobs it up and down. As shy as James would be in guiding her onto Thomas. In turn she holds onto Thomas' sides as hard as she's seen James do, leaving bruises that Thomas would cherish and adore in the mirror for good amounts of time.

"He would," Thomas says, then gasps and loses his train of thought as she takes him deep into her throat. But he's right: James would love to see Thomas brought to this state by mere thoughts of him, and by this woman he also desires. It would take some persuading to get him to accept that he may indulge in these pleasures, but he would love it. He would also love to watch her take her satisfaction from Thomas, the same way he likes her taking it from him, or simply for herself. James may not quite know what to do with himself in these situations, but his quick, dry wit would return to him soon enough.

Thomas bucks into her mouth quite unexpectedly. She welcomes it, though she feels a sting in her eyes. She's resting nearly her full weight on his lower body now. He is too far gone to be distracted by her breasts. He's clinging to her shoulders nearly as hard as she to his midriff now.

"He will -" Thomas says, and then she swallows around him and he comes with a strangled shout. Her mouth is full. She does her level best to swallow, but then has to get up to draw out the chamber pot and spit the rest into it.

"I'm sorry," he says.

She laughs. "Don't be. I enjoyed that. Wouldn't you?"

"Yes, but -" 

She gets back into bed and kisses him to shut him up. He smiles into it. The line between benevolent and wicked is oh so thin as regards his smiles, almost nonexistent.

"Darling love," he murmurs as he repositions himself so he no longer leans against the headboard but lies down fully, hogging her pillows.

"Yes?" She indulges him, following him down to kiss his nose.

"Turn around," he says, accompanied by a vaguely circle-shaped wave of a hand gesture.

Her heart is beating hard. She feels it almost as intensely between her legs as in her chest. She obeys. She stares at the candle on the bedside table by whose light Thomas can see her if he so chooses, but she can no longer see him. He snuggles up against her back and kisses her neck. Through her shift she can feel his soft, damp cock nestled against the back of her thighs. His chest is solid and warm and she presses back into it. 

Thomas runs a hand down her side from her shoulder to her hip, making her shiver. Then he covers her belly, rubbing up and down suggestively.

"Come on," Miranda complains, grabs his hand and drags it down where she wants it.

He cups the whole mound of her sex and lets her push into his hand desperately a few times before he chuckles into her neck and starts playing with her clitoris through her shift. He runs a finger around it in circles, takes it between two fingers and pulls, tickles around and on it with too light touches. He makes her gasp and curse and push back into him and forward into his hand and finally cry out: "Tease!"

He kisses her neck gently in apology and strokes her sex quickly and rhythmically now. It's not long until she curls up around his hand, overcome with pleasure. He keeps stroking her until she makes a sound that sounds like half a sob even to herself, at which point she again reassures Thomas, who draws his hand back as if burned, that she was enjoying herself.

When she lies in his arms and listens as his breathing becomes slow and regular, candle extinguished now, she thinks to herself that Thomas was right again, even though he never managed to complete his sentence: James will. If only he comes back safe and sound, he will.


	2. Eloped

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James is a mess and being in his head is hella weird.

Miranda has built a veritable network of spies to rival that of Guthrie senior and that of the emerging Guthrie junior as well as the intelligence-gathering operation that is, in effect, the brothel. James does not know how much of his success as a pirate is due to him being the only captain in Nassau with access to this source of information. He guesses a lot. Between that and Miranda keeping him what might have been "sane" under better circumstances, he credits her for more of Captain Flint's success than himself.

The Captain's atrocities, though, are all his own, he has to face that. Up until now.

Miranda has handed him the letter from her source wordlessly, with a grave look on her face, and he failed to see how it warranted any exceptional treatment for at least three quarters of it. It describes the course and schedule of a ship that is to set out months from now, from England. Its only cargo of note will be passengers, which would usually disqualify it as a desirable prize - passengers are more likely to be defended rather than given up than most other goods, and hostage exchanges bring with them a whole host of problems that fencing stolen goods doesn't. Never mind that keeping hostages is in itself more trouble than simply storing plunder.

Now he has read one particular name and he understands why Miranda has singled out this one letter from the stack of intelligence material he would usually peruse at some later point during his shore leave when he found the time and leisure. His blood boils. His hands are clenched into fists. Miranda is watching him grimly. There is no doubt she expected this anger to surface, and was hoping to see it. He feels it clearly: He has become a weapon in her hands, made himself into one over the preceding years. Miranda has aimed and fired. The shot will land true in a few months time, for he has seen to it that he is a well-constructed and well-kept weapon, but in this case, she will be the murderess.

She understands this, too. That is why her gaze is so heavy and portentous. It is a great relief that she will bear this particular burden. He will have the more physically gruesome task, of course, but by being spared that, she also gives up the sick satisfaction he knows that part will bring.

He folds the letter, the rest of the words of which only blur before his eyes right now, carefully, as if to reassure himself that he is still capable of movements that aren't harsh, and places it on the very top of the neatly tied intelligence stack.

"Thank you," he says. He can't bring himself to look at Miranda's face, but examines her hands, working on sewing shut a hole she ripped into her skirts during garden work. He takes the hand that is only holding the fabric in place. He needs something to hold on to. She drops the needle and envelopes his hand with both of hers.

"You're welcome," she says. She sounds terrifying. A witch and a pirate bride, just as the New Providence farmers like to paint her, just as has more recently spread into Nassau town and onto the ships making anchor there, where her mythos becomes entangled with his – his actual personal one, that bears some relation to his life, rather than the scary, but generic pirate captain the population inland make Mrs Barlow's lover out to be.

He draws her hand closer, presses a long kiss to the back of it. If this is how she will use him, his allegiance is hers. The deed they have just agreed upon silently will not bring Thomas back. He wouldn't even be pleased by it, were he alive, as much as he hated his father in his time. He was a truly good Christian, believing in redemption not only of God's subjects in heaven, or of his own would-be subjects in the colonies, but forgiveness on a personal basis as well. James and Miranda have always been closer to each other in that regard as they ever were to Thomas, and have grown even more so without his influence close by, and eventually gone from this world entirely. It will not be his revenge, in all honesty. It will be theirs. Only theirs.

Miranda touches his face with the same reverence he feels for her in this moment. She traces his lips that will convince men to carry out her will, his beard that will drip with the blood of everyone that will stand in their way, the outline of his eyes which will bear witness, his forehead and temples behind which he is picturing all this.

James gets up. Miranda is watching him, amused, while he pushes the table to the side. Its legs scrape over the floor with a screech. He falls to his knees before her.

"Really?!" She laughs her pearly laugh above him, tilts an eyebrow.

Rather than answer, he bows his head. His pose is otherwise an officer's straight one, his hands behind his back. He waits patiently for her to tell him to stop being ridiculous, get up and get back to business.

"Fine. Touch me, then," she orders instead. She's rolling her eyes, but also smiling.

Of course she's right. It is laughable and perhaps sad that he wants this now, when ever since they learned of Thomas' death he has been supremely unenthusiastic about any kind of sexual intimacy, often leaving Miranda to stalk the island for persons more willing to satisfy her physical needs despite the associated dangers. But he cannot go out and carry out her will as regards the matter of her father-in-law immediately, and he so longs to. Doing her bidding in the bedroom – or, as it were, on the kitchen floor – will have to suffice for the moment.

He runs his hands down her calves, taking care to focus on their lovely shape, rather than beginning to outline a plan to take the Maria Aleyne, or pondering what exact method to choose for Alfred Hamilton's execution. It doesn't quite work, but he arrives again at how it is Miranda's wish, and Miranda's information, on which he will act.

He takes off her shoes and kisses each foot in turn, much as he kissed her hand earlier.  

She presses up against his chin with her toes. He lifts his head, half-forced, half-compliant. "Come on," she says. She sounds annoyed, but as she has made him look up at her, he also sees her licking her lips, her eyes wandering over his bowed body.

"Shirt off," she says. He obeys with too much haste and too little grace, failing to make a show of it for her. She seems to enjoy the sight anyway.

"Good." Miranda nods. Her tone no longer points to the humour in the situation, making it feel more tense and serious. He misses her levity a little, but it is appropriate, seeing as it arose from premeditations towards murder, and it makes James' desire spike like it hasn't in a long time. "You  _are_ beautiful, my darling." She sounds as if she had forgotten and has been reminded, which may well be the case. Miranda's beauty takes James by surprise often enough.

He gets back to kissing her ankles, giving her a good view of his broad back, then kissing and caressing up her legs, underneath her skirts this time. She makes a game of lifting them higher and higher, coaxing him up, chasing the hem. He rests his head on her knee briefly to gaze up her body appreciatively and she unties the ribbon in his hair, combing through the strands of it with her fingers. Finally her skirts are bunched around her midriff and James is mouthing at her drawers over her hipbone, stroking her belly and the slope of the small of her back.

She draws his hand from her belly to her breast, which he cups and traces the outline of over her dress. She tsks. With some wriggling and turning on her part, minor cursing on his, and united efforts in the unravelling of knots they get the top part of her stays loose enough that he can reach into her collar and tease her nips, while she can draw her increasingly heavy breaths more freely at last.

She gets her drawers off. Then she opens her legs wide and lays bare her innermost parts and issues the simple command "Suck."

Years later and she is still spiting the last words her father-in-law ever directed to her, to keep her legs and her mouth closed. Soon, soon he will learn that she can do much worse than that.

James sucks at her labia and clitoris and makes her moan. She presses her heels into his back to spur him on and he licks deftly and fast.

"Take your rings off," she breathes. "No, wait..."

She scrabbles for his right hand, on her chest again, and goes for his rings herself, rather roughly. One clinks and clutters to the floor, one, on his ring finger, remains. She handles it more gently and pushes it up and down the finger, at first slowly, then as fast as he is licking. It is this, somewhat to his surprise, which finally coaxes him to full hardness. He does not let it distract him from keeping up his rhythm of licks and sucks. When she takes off the last ring and lets both it and his hand drop, he follows the implicit order almost immediately, only taking a brief time to stroke along the slick folds of her first. Then he presses three fingers into her hole. It accommodates them nicely, throbbing with her heartbeat and her want. He holds still for a long moment, listening to her panting, feeling her with his fingers and his mouth.

She wiggles impatiently and he chuckles, kissing every part of her sex with care and great attention to detail. She tries to move on his fingers, but her position is less than ideal for it. He nevertheless recommences taking his time and frustrating her. He is drawn in by her scorn these days and he does want to feel it on himself, not just on the far-away target of their as yet silent plot, because he is clearly among the men in her life deserving of it. He resents, in particular, that Miranda has expressed more anger with her late husband than with him. There are many explanations for what Thomas has done. Desperation. A wish for escape. Truly and finally, real madness. James could not bear to fault him for any of them.

Meanwhile, James knowingly took Miranda away from even the shadow of her old life, from the chance to return to bury her husband... And the harshest thing she feels for him is tired disappointment. He doesn't want to hurt her further to draw her anger where it belongs. He is most definitely not hurting her now, quite the opposite. And yet it seems to have worked. She presses her heels harder into his back, and when that fails to spur him on, slaps his shoulder.

"Move already. Move!" she cries out.

"You only had to ask, my Lady," he murmurs into her curly hair, draws his fingers out and drives them back in again deeply. Miranda moans. He chases that moan, focuses on eliciting it again with his hands and tongue, while he ignores the growing needy ache of his own lust. he has her not only moaning again, but quivering, and then clamping and spasming around him, in no time. A part of him is disappointed that he has assuaged her brief anger with him so quickly. But it was never going to last. Neither will the satisfaction of disposing of Lord Alfred, but in the face of the impossibility of regaining what they really want, both of them must make do with taking what they can. 

Only when Miranda orders him to get up does he realise he's still kneeling, his hand still in her, his head resting against her belly. He slips his fingers out slowly and with care from where her muscles grip them tightly now. Her skirts fall as he withdraws. He gets up heavily, not without gathering his rings from the floor first, and stretches his aching knees.

Miranda also rises from her chair. She stands opposite him, smiling, looking him up and down, considering her plan of action for a moment. Then she picks a two-pronged attack: she captures his still-wet lips in a deep, hard kiss, while her hand goes straight to his erection, rubbing up and down the crotch of his breeches.

After a second he takes a step back. She seems surprised, although him withdrawing from her advances certainly isn't new. Granted, he is not usually quite so aroused.

"No," he says, quietly. He might pleasure Miranda with thoughts of killing a man in his head, they may even make him hard, but he is not at a point where he will get off to them. She processes his answer for a while longer. Then she collects herself and sighs. She turns and looks for something, finds it, hands it to him. A kitchen towel. He dries his face and hand automatically, then puts his rings back on, one by one. Miranda is righting her clothes as well. She sighs again at his steadying hand on her shoulder, but lets him help her put her stays back on with no complaint.

He wills his cock down somewhat fruitlessly as he picks the letter back up as if the interlude hadn't happened. But he has no trouble reading it now, and sometime later, while he is consulting maps and charts, checking and rechecking the dates in the letter and pondering routes, his erection finally subsides without him noticing.

  
  



	3. Widowed

It's morning. It might be the beginning of a fair and beautiful Sunday, but the atmosphere is slightly off. Thomas has left James in bed, awake but brooding, staring at the ceiling, unwilling to move or react to him in more than grunts. On some occasions, he wonders what he is doing, living with and sleeping next to this stranger. A handsome and enticing stranger, yes, but a stranger. When James gets into these moods, Thomas doesn't feel that way. It is very like the man he once knew for a few precious months to look off into space, his mind evidently in some faraway place. It has become harder to reach him there, that is all.  
  
Thomas is making breakfast, both because he is set in his routines and because he hopes to entice his cohabitant out of his inaccessible state and out of bed with the smell of brewing tea and toasted bread. He ends up having breakfast alone. He reads last week's Boston news same as he would have, had he had company, and yet by his second cup of tea the disquiet he's been feeling all morning turns into outright worry over James not joining him.  
  
From there it is just one step to panic. His eye falls on the wrong word in the news bulletin – "storm", perhaps, or "death toll" – and within seconds he becomes convinced that something terrible has happened to James. The joke is that many terrible things have indeed happened to James, to both of them, just probably not in the half hour since he left him, upstairs in their quiet little house. Thomas knows that, and still he spills some tea in his hurry to leave the kitchen and get back up the stairs.  
  
The bed is empty, sheet crumpled. Thomas takes a step into the room. It is hesitant, filled with trepidation. In this moment he is convinced his eerie premonition was right. It would be wrong to say he is prepared to see James lying in a pool of his own blood, or to be overwhelmed by whoever took him as soon as he enters. He expects it, yes. But he is utterly unprepared. He would much rather turn on his heels and run than face the possibility. But actually looking at the situation is the only way to keep his mind from conjuring up ever more terrible outcomes, the only chance to find out if things are all right after all.  
  
As it turns out, things are not quite all right, but there are no malevolent intruders, and James is not bleeding out, nor has he been taken away. He sits curled up in a corner on the floor. His face is hidden in his arms, but from the way his shoulders are shaking Thomas can tell he is crying heavily.  
  
The dread vanishes and is replaced with a much more reasonable fear. He has seen James like this before, and it heralds confessions he does not want to hear. Or rather, he does: He wants to understand James, wants to know him again. But it is difficult. It's difficult for James too, as evidenced by the tears.  
  
These aren't the big confessions, the "I killed your father"s, the "I couldn't protect Miranda"s, not even the "I strangled my best friend to death because he disagreed with me"s or "Miranda was miserable with me"s. While those took a lot out of James, he got through them all within days of their reunion, and with a measure of composure attained by mulling them over to the point of numbness. The memories that wreck him like this aren't ones he has thought much about, so when they come back to him they hit him like a cannonball to the chest.  
  
Thomas has heard, after hours of holding a trembling, ruined looking James who had been unable or unwilling to speak up to then: "Coming back into the maroon village after the battle with Hornigold, I scared two little girls. It would turn out later that their father was one of the men that died on the beach, persuading the English and the turncoats that we were defeated so they would follow us into our trap. But they didn't cry because of that, not then. They ran screaming because I was covered in blood and told them to stop staring."  
  
He has heard: "I shot a magistrate's wife in Kingston because she screamed too loudly. Afterwards, with a bullet hole in her head, she reminded me of Miranda." James sat across from him at the table for this one, expressionless and refusing to be touched.  
  
He has heard, interspersed with long pauses, dry sobs and desperate, humourless laughter: "We took an English merchant sailor while returning from Tortuga. The only cargo of note were forty-six West African slaves. They had overheard crew saying that if the pirates won the battle, we would probably free them. They welcomed us cheering. We were running losses that month, so I made the call to sell them on to Jamaica."  
  
In the beginning, James was trying to push Thomas away from himself with these confessions, Thomas is sure, or at least warn him off. When Thomas took him back into his life despite them, James attempted on occasion to use them to make Thomas understand him. That too was unsuccessful: he is an utter mystery to Thomas still. These days they are simply honesty for the sake of honesty, an explanation for the feelings James can't hide. Thomas accepts them as such, even if he still cannot comprehend the things he hears.  
  
Thomas braces himself. He will not dare speculate what James will reveal to him this time. Both his notions of what James has done surpassing the reality and the reality surpassing his notions would hurt him immensely. And so he keeps his mind blank, a space to be filled by whatever is to pass between them, as he sits on the floor next to James. He lays a gentle, inquiring hand on his shoulder, ready for him to flinch back and put distance between them before he

is willing to open himself up. But James does no such thing. He wipes at his face without much effect – the tears just keep streaming – and leans into the touch. Thomas welcomes his solid form into his arms and strokes over his back and his no longer shaved off hair in soothing motions. James holds onto him as if an imprisoned man through bars, trying to keep a loved one from leaving, or perhaps like a man drowning to a piece of flotsam.  
  
The admission James mumbles brokenly into his shoulder is not at all what Thomas expected.  
  
"I miss her."  
  
Thomas presses him to himself more tightly. This he understands. How can he ever think of James as a stranger when they share this?  
  
"I miss her too. So much."  
  
"She should be here with you." Instead of me, James doesn't say, but Thomas hears it all too clearly.  
  
"No. She should be here with both of us. It should be the three of us, together," Thomas insists.  
  
"She was your wife." Thomas can barely make it out. It is said lowly through gritted teeth, muffled by the satin of his waistcoat, and interrupted by a strangled sob.  
  
"Yes. She was. You also lived as her husband in every way but the legal one for longer than I did, and I understand you have no great regard for legality."  
  
James' startled laugh sounds more like a cough, but it's something.  
  
"You were the good husband."  
  
"Oh, I'm sure some would beg to differ." Thomas' hand runs further down James' back. He suggests, more than executes, a little squeeze of his backside.  
  
James breathes in deeply. Some of the tension is gone from his body now. Thomas kisses the top of his head briefly, a proud little reward for making it so far through this. James lets out a long sigh that might almost be content if not for the remaining shakiness.  
  
Thomas continues speaking before James can start listing the ways in which he failed Miranda, real and perceived: "Believe me, if she had not wanted to be by your side, she would have left. The last time I knew her to be in a position she did not want to be in, she resolved to get out of it by marrying me, and once she had set her mind on it, there was no stopping her, and she never went back to that particular standing in life."  
  
Thomas drew back to look at James. His eyes were still reddened, his cheeks still damp, but he was no longer crying. He made a face that was reserved for biting into something sour and loathing to concede a point. "I suppose," he said.  
  
"The three of us should be together," Thomas repeated. Memories were flooding his mind. Of happier times, when Miranda and he entertained Thomas' then naval liaison. He did not want to tally how many evenings they had actually spent all of them together, how many nights. The number would always come up frightfully short. And then there were memories that went further back, to when it was just Miranda and him and various short-lived trysts and affairs.  
  
In retrospect it was so easy to see that there had been something missing between them. A point of connection beyond convenience and deep mutual understanding. And finally, memories of just the two of them when they already knew what they were missing. "Did you feel that when you were alone with her as well?" Thomas bites his lower lip. That sounded a lot as if he was looking for reassurance that he had been missed, needy. He knows he had been missed: It was in the relief with which James looked at him when waking from nightmares, the desperation with which he clung to him, the reticence with which James allowed them to be separated these days, if at all. What he was actually longing for was points of commonality with these unknown versions of the people he loved, something by which to relate to them during their lost decade.  
  
James gives it to him without hesitating, always so good at catching his meaning, even when put into clumsy phrases. "Yeah. It felt like a piece had been cut out of and between us. You were missing like… Like she is missing now. It felt like someone had slashed a deep hole in me and plucked my heart out, and she… well, I don't think I listened to her well enough or often enough to relay what she was feeling exactly. But I do know she was aching for you all the time. A bit of it was in everything she did."  
  
This knowledge is an awful thing. And yet, Thomas cherishes it, because he can feel every part of it, whereas so many other memories that trouble James remain impenetrable.  
  
"I understand," he whispers into James' hair, and for once, it's the truth.  
  
"You do?" Of course James had figured out long ago Thomas could not emotionally follow in most instances when the past ten years came up. He is a clever man. All the more important to reassure him that this once, he is not alone with his feelings about that time.  
  
Thomas shrugs. "As you say, she is missing like that now. And once upon a time, we would worry when you were gone, scared for your life, and it would be almost as bad. Want to know a secret about that?" Thomas holds his breath for a second. Maybe James isn't ready to change the subject like this. Maybe he needs to talk about the aching absence of Miranda in his heart more. But then, maybe distracting him from that train of thought is exactly the right thing to do. And surely, reminiscing about Miranda, alive, must be just as good a way of honouring her as mourning her death, if not a better one.  
  
There is a ghost of a smile on James' lips when he says: "Tell me, then." Not entirely the wrong course, then. Thomas exhales.  
  
"When you were away at sea, we used to give each other sexual favours, telling each other what you would think of this one or that one, picturing you imagining them, picturing you pleasuring yourself to them, while we prayed silently for your safe return. Did she ever tell you this? No, I don't imagine she did. You were never very –" Suddenly Thomas finds himself with his back on the floor, a good hundred and eighty pounds of semi-retired pirate captain on top of him. Thankfully, there is a hand cradling the back of his head, so it doesn't hit the floor boards. It is still quite a shock. He is being kissed fiercely, but something about it feels less passionate and more calculating. Even not truly knowing James anymore, it is easy to tell that this isn't happening to satisfy a lust awakened by his words, but to shut him up. Which illustrates his point nicely.  
  
"…communicative about this kind of thing," he manages to finish his sentence when James frees his mouth to regale his jaw and neck with kisses instead.  
  
Eventually he stills, just lying there atop Tomas, breathing heavily as if from great physical exertion. "She would never forgive me for how I'm wasting this precious time with you that I've been given. Your precious time with me. Just the same as I will never forgive myself for the time with her I wasted."  
  
"Time spent grieving isn't wasted," Thomas counters. "Nor is time spent worrying. Do you think we made better use of our time together just because we didn't let our sorrows stop us from fucking? Is that what you think I meant to say? No. It was simply another method of coping, that is all." He finally got enough of a bearing on his new position to coordinate his arms and resume stroking James' hair and back. "Though I dare say it hurt fewer people than starting a war or two."  
  
James actually chuckles. "That's fair."  
  
Encouraged, Thomas allows himself even more levity. "All things considered, I don't think it was such a bad way of coping at all."  
  
"No, I don't suppose it was," James says. He gets up and stands over him, every bit the impressive captain, except for the ruffled hair and creased nightshirt. He extends a hand and Thomas takes it without thinking, letting him help him up. James tugs him just a little bit closer than is strictly necessary for that by that hand and Thomas recognizes it for the invitation it is. He embraces James and places a soft, undemanding kiss on his lips. James hugs him tighter in response. They stand for a long time, holding on and breathing deeply to the same rhythm.  
  
Then the church bells start ringing, calling more observant Christians than them to service. James lets go, looking alarmed.  
  
"Is it that late already?" he asks.  
  
Thomas shrugs. "I think, being everlasting, God can wait. Though maybe it is too late not to have eaten yet. Do you want to come down for breakfast?"  
  
James makes a face that indicates he would rather not have to face the world quite yet, even if the world, in this case, is only their kitchen.  
  
"Or would you like to go back to bed? I could bring some bread up."  
  
"Or you could concern yourself less with feeding me." There's a look of regret for his abrasive tone in his eyes immediately. "You could also stay."  
  
Thomas feels a smile come to his face uninvited at James, albeit reluctantly, actually giving some indication as to what he needs. That what he needs happens to be Thomas' presence makes this small victory even better, as he can actually provide that.  
  
"I could," he agrees.  
  
James sits back on the bed. His movements look exhausted. Despite being warned off, Thomas is still concerned with feeding him, but even more concerned with heeding his wishes, so he does not dash off into the kitchen, no matter how soon he tells himself he would be back. Instead, he sits next to James again, not touching, but not so far away it would be hard for James to close the distance. And he does, pecking him on the cheek sweetly.  
  
"Oh," Thomas says, raising his hand to the spot James' lips have just left. The kiss reminds him of the last one Miranda ever gave him, along with the promise "Not long now until you have him back".  
  
"What?" asks James.  
  
"It just occurred to me that I never kissed her often enough," he replies.  
  
James winces. "Neither did I."  
  
And just like that, they are kissing. They can never make up for those particular missed opportunities, but it seems urgent to not lose these new ones. It's many small presses of lips and a few longer ones, some nips here and there. Eventually, James begins to unhurriedly undo buttons on his waistcoat between pecks. Soon James' hands run down his torso over his shirt. Thomas divests himself of it. James' hands are divine, calluses and all, and having them on his bare chest is a privilege. In a kinder world, more slender hands would join them.  
  
When their lips meet again, Thomas pushes his tongue past James'. James holds on to his shoulders. Thomas tugs on his nightshirt experimentally. James breaks off the kiss immediately, but only to tug the garment over his head. He disarranges his hair even further in the process. The word "adorable" comes to mind, unbidden, in an approximation of Miranda's voice. Thomas thinks he never quite manages to remember her voice right. But the tone she used for such words describing the mutual target of their desires, at least that stuck in his memory.  
  
Thomas ruffles that adorable hair playfully. There's so much to look at when James sits naked and willing on a bed, almost in his lap. Better to focus on just one of those things, like the growing red soon-to-be-mane, lest he be overwhelmed. But eventually he can't stop his eyes from roving over freckles and scars and wrinkles and muscles and pert nipples and a cock not entirely unaffected by extended kissing, however comparably chaste most of it was, and by the very look with which Thomas takes it in.  
  
He takes a deep breath. "In those days. When we were waiting for you. One of the things she used to say she wanted to watch me do for you one day." Thomas hesitates and James swallows, then nods curtly. Right, then.  
  
"Was bring you apart with my fingers in you, the way I would sometimes do for her." It is spoken. The fear that James would find it in poor taste slowly abates as a smile creeps onto his face, and eventually evolves into a dark chuckle.  
  
"It's a shame I already insinuated we never discussed those things. Missed a perfectly fine way to get you into the position I prefer for the night."  
  
Thomas is so scandalised by the mere implied suggestion he even neglects to point out it is late Sunday morning, not night. "I would never invent– to–"  
  
James interrupts him with another kiss, this one wet and forceful.  
  
Then he lays himself across Thomas' lap, arse in the air. Sure enough, a hypothetical observer would have a good view, if she sat, for example, at the end of the bed, with James' feet in her lap, where she could tickle them and watch his whole body flinch, ever delighted by being able to evoke such reactions.  
  
"Do it, then," James says, slightly muffled, as his face is half-buried in the mattress, "for her."  
  
Thomas notices that his hands have been fluttering in the air rather comically, trying and failing to decide where to touch James, as is so often the case since they have been reunited. One finally settles at the small of James' back while the other grabs the bottle of oil they keep on the bedside table for just such occasions.  
  
Thomas is reminded of a time when then-Lieutenant McGraw, having grown more bold in their intimate encounters, lay before him in a similar manner and asked him with a rough voice: "Hit me?"  
  
Thomas had been shocked and had refused resolutely, caressing his lover more gently that night than perhaps any other. James had not asked him again, neither in that life nor in the current one. Thomas wonders whether Miranda has ever indulged that wish. He knows she tied him up several times back then, gagged him once or twice.  
  
He wonders whether he could still refuse James now. He so wants to make him lose himself. That is why, out of all the acts Miranda had mentioned or hinted at, he chose this one. It is by no means guaranteed to achieve his goal, but the most likely to in his experience. He has no experience with physically hurting James, so does not know how it would compare, but even if it were to guarantee success, he's not sure it would be worth it. He strokes slow circles over James's back, an unspoken apology for even entertaining the idea of adding to his scars and blemishes.  
  
James doesn't hurry him on in words nor in movements, just lying lazily. He can imagine him purring. He is very comfortable indeed – he does feel him grow harder against his thigh. He curses silently.  
  
"Get off my lap, you ridiculous big cat." He hands James the bottle that he, lost in thought, still held.  
  
"But I thought…" Always so petulant!  
  
"You thought correctly, but I need to get my trousers off." I want to feel you properly, on my skin, he doesn't say. It is obvious.  
  
James scrambles up and sits on his heels next to him as he peels his trousers off hastily.  
  
"Alright. Now come back here," he offers to James, who's examining him with unmistakable hunger in his expression, and not for that too-late breakfast. "Exactly as you were before, if you please."  
  
James gives him the bottle back and drops to all fours over his knees, not touching him, because he always has to be a bit difficult, hasn't he?  
  
"No, exactly as you were," Thomas repeats, and finally James allows himself to sink into his now naked lap. His stiff cock lies hot and heavy on Thomas' leg. He adjusts a bit to take it between his thighs. A small grunt from James.  
  
"She probably wouldn’t mind hearing you, you know," he reminds James gently. He would never get his partner to be the most vocal in bed, but trying occasionally couldn’t hurt, especially as they are invoking the spirit of Miranda, who had been so fond of his rare passionate cries in life. "Neither would I, as you’re aware."  
  
"I’m sure," James remarks dryly.  
  
Thomas sighs, finally uncorks the bottle and drips oil onto his fingers sparingly over James’ back. He does not want to get into a discussion about having to make the bottle last anytime in the near future. He puts it to the side and massages the few drops he spilled into James’ skin. A low, drawn-out hum vibrates through the body under his hand. The cock trapped between his thighs moves ever so slightly. Oh, Miranda would be very pleased with this, and so is he.  
  
He slides his fingers between James’ buttocks and lets the tips rest where the skin dips down. James is patient. Takes deep breaths. Relaxes. Thomas, too, can wait. Miranda would be the one to hurry them on at this point. So he only draws one small circle around the rim while James inhales and then presses in on the exhale. James' muscles yield. The skin all around his finger is so delicate and smooth, he is always so very conscious of his capability to tear it, overstretch him despite how relaxed he is with trust for him, hurt him in any number of ways.  
  
He goes slow, both out of care and for the tease of it, drags the skin along on the way out, smooths it over when he slides back in. James' head rests on his right forearm. His right hand is clenched into the sheet by now. With his left he reaches back, finds Thomas' hip, holds on to it.   
  
On the next stroke, Thomas pushes his middle finger in along the index finger.  He finds the lump of James' prostate with the tips of both fingers and focusses on petting it with them rather than just gliding past it.  
  
James makes an uncharacteristically high-pitched sound.  
  
"Alright?" Thomas asks, pulling out slowly. Even to him his voice sounds rough and needy.  
  
"Just found the trigger, that's all," James mumbles into his forearm.  
  
"The trigger?" Thomas repeats while he sinks his fingers back in. For one, it's not like he doesn't love James' scars, but it reassures him that the inside of him is so unblemished and untouched by violence. And then, it's disquieting to hear James think of himself as a weapon in any context. "Surely, a rifle or pistol or such, whose trigger requires a quite uncertain number of minutes of pulling, would be hugely disadvantageous in battle?"  
  
"You clearly have no idea how long it takes to load a rifle or pistol or somesuch, and how often they misfire."  
  
"I've fired a weapon before!" he protests. "They don't take that long to load."  
  
"Feels longer in battle than on a hunting trip," James retorts. Thomas can think of no better response than ruffling his hair and driving his fingers into him deeply. James pushes back against that thrust. His cock moves between Thomas' thighs. He presses them together around it, welcoming it. Along with the evidence of James' capacity for quips and quick parrying it makes him smile. The powerlessness James displayed on the floor is well and truly gone, even in what might seem like a position of supplication.  
  
James' hand wanders over his hipbones and abdomen. Being ticklish, he flinches. James turns his head to grin at him and thrusts between his thighs and then back against his hand with considerable strength. Then it is his turn to gasp as James' fingertips drag along his shaft. He wishes briefly their position allowed him to lean back against the headboard or the wall when James' fingers wrap around it and he pulls, it makes him so light-headed.  
  
Not wanting to be outdone, Thomas fucks him just as quickly as James is stroking him. James keens and grips him tighter. This pressure and the pressure within him taken together are too much. Thomas grips James' hair harder instinctively than he ever would voluntarily as he comes, but James breathes "yes" in reaction, so he leaves his fist balled in his hair. James' hips buck desperately against his hand that's momentarily stilled. He uses his own seed to additionally slick his fingers. He pushes three of them into his and Miranda's miraculously returned lover this time. James says "yes" again, louder this time. It is certainly no shout, but perhaps as close as James will come. Thomas hooks his fingers and drags them purposefully against his prostate and James collapses with pleasure. He murmurs something into his forearm that might be "Miranda?" or might not be.  
  
There is

warm, sticky semen between Thomas' thighs and it occurs to him that there are definitive drawbacks to their perpendicular positioning, even in addition to the lack of surfaces to lean on, such as that he can't kiss James senseless from here. He draws his fingers out while James' muscles contract around him.   
  
Getting his legs out from under James, heavy and laggard with satisfaction, proves a challenge, but not an insurmountable one, and one well worth mastering for the prize of getting to lie in his arms and kiss him languidly.  
  
Eventually he strokes his hair away from his ear and whispers into it: "Was this alright?"  
  
"I thought we kept it up for a decent amount of time considering our advancing years and the morbid occasion," James says, perfectly dryly.  
  
Thomas, although taken aback, chuckles into his neck. There's James drawing the startled laughter again. And avoiding the emotional dimension of things. If that's how it is, Thomas is returning to practical matters as well. "May I feed you breakfast now?"  
  
James smiles. "You can do with me whatever you like."


End file.
